


The Legacy of the Fallen Sea Queen

by nonky



Category: Nancy Drew (TV 2019)
Genre: Gen, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:54:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22155088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonky/pseuds/nonky
Summary: Nancy sighed. She had restarted the Lucy investigation by breaking into the morgue and asking for the file. It didn't make it any better Lucy's ghost had led her to the evidence she took. Ghostly messages didn't work in court, even if she could arrange a demonstration of the things she'd seen Lucy do to guide her. Why would Lucy trust Carson Drew's daughter to help her?Assorted spoilers up to Episode 9.
Relationships: Carson Drew & Nancy Drew
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23
Collections: Nancy Drew TV Series (2019)





	The Legacy of the Fallen Sea Queen

**Author's Note:**

> I debated holding this story until Episode 10 aired, but I was actually dreaming about it and getting very frustrated not having any fandom friends to help in my speculation. This is either a big swing and a huge, crazy miss, or I've been paying attention to all the right foreshadowing. I honestly can't tell which is correct, but I did try to make sure I was only using details specifically from the show instead of my own speculative details I had to fill in myself before they were provided.
> 
> I made an extensive list of all the points I felt added up to this from canon, very much in the manner of Nancy's journal entries. I'll probably post it in an endnote after I get it sorted into some order. For right now, I just have time to do a very short and spoilery single paragraph. I have no insider knowledge of where the show is going, and other than watching the upcoming episode tv spots have not been spoiled for any future plots. Either I am really tuned in, or I've gone right off into my own accidental AU.

Carson Drew made bail the afternoon of his second day in jail, and was home by three. Nancy left work with a mumbled excuse to George that merited a muttered complaint with no real ill will. She hurried home and found her father in the kitchen. He was probably attempting to eat, but his jumble of mismatched ingredients on the counter showed his mind wasn't on it.

"Dad!"

He looked over his shoulder at her, and his face was set in a resigned calm. Her impulse to hug him dried up to an uncertain hover in the dining room.

"I'm fine. They treated me okay, but the food was pretty rough," he said. "I'm just looking for something that won't set off my heartburn again."

"I'm sorry I thought you were guilty, even for a moment. It was obviously wrong once I stopped worrying it might be true. I know you. You've raised me," Nancy said sadly. "I hope you can forgive me, but even more than that, you have to let me help fix this. I just - I saw how afraid you were when I asked, and I knew it wasn't - I jumped to a wrong conclusion, but the facts add up to something."

She slipped off her shoes and set her purse down. He wasn't leaving the kitchen. Despite his talk about making food, he was fussing with the coffee machine and avoiding eye contact. His shoulders were twitching as if his back hurt, which might be the case after some time on the jail bunk beds.

"With everyone else, I keep finding good reasons for their actions. I don't understand why you're not defending yourself. I know you love me enough to go to prison for me, but you have a perfectly good defense worked out for my charges. Mom is gone. So why would you sit in jail? You must know it hurts me more to lose you to prison, even if it makes my case harder. So you must be protecting me from something more than that. And it was hard to imagine worse than losing you, too."

Her eyes welled, and she saw her father grip the edge of the counter. Nancy stepped closer. She pulled her hair back and tied it up. 

"I've gotten good at making omelets," she said, sniffling. "We have some veggies and cheese. I think there's even some ham I could dice up if it won't be hard on your stomach."

Carson covered his mouth and nodded absently. He started throwing the boxes and cans back into the same cupboard. 

"Okay, I'll try an omelet," he said. "I need some coffee. I got dropped off. My lawyer is coming back in a few hours and we're going to meet about my defense. I'd like a shower."

"I'm pretty quick at eggs. George figured out my cooking skills were a lot less than my resume made them out to be. She's started mentoring me in her own way."

Getting a frying pan heating with some oil, Nancy searched for the appropriate lid. She started when it was handed to her, her father looking at her wearily as he shut the cupboard. 

"I'm not angry. I'm worried about what happens to you if I can't beat these charges. The fact is I was there. I didn't think anyone saw me. I didn't think I left evidence behind to incriminate myself," he said. "But if I had, it now looks like I asked you to help me steal it. Both of us have interfered with Lucy Sable's case now. Your friends know details about that. The death no one was interested in solving is suddenly getting a lot of notice. I think the police were checking me as a suspect before Karen found your notebook. It all happened too fast to just be about that."

Nancy sighed. She had restarted the Lucy investigation by breaking into the morgue and asking for the file. It didn't make it any better Lucy's ghost had led her to the evidence she took. Ghostly messages didn't work in court, even if she could arrange a demonstration of the things she'd seen Lucy do to guide her. Why would Lucy trust Carson Drew's daughter to help her?

"I didn't know how I'd made a connection to Lucy Sable. I don't have any experience seeing ghosts before. The day after Tiffany Hudson died, I visited the psychic she'd been seeing. I didn't believe in any of it. I just wanted to ask her about Tiffany, and she insisted on doing a seance. The psychic asked us to join hands and welcome the spirit, focusing on the person we wanted to contact. I went along, but if I was going to hear from the dead I'd want to hear from Mom. So that was what I was thinking. I was asking for my mother to come through."

The egg carton was only half full, and her father had been in jail for over a day. She took the whole thing and decided to use all of them. He could throw away what he didn't want. She grabbed an onion and the mixed peppers.

"The psychic was more frightened than any of us when her voice was hijacked and we got a real message. 'Find the dress.' Later that night, the lights went out at home, the attic opened and I did. None of it made any sense until I let myself follow the unlikely answers. If I asked for Mom and got Lucy, why? She and Mom look pretty similar, and I look like Mom. Lucy and I both won Sea Queen, but so did eighteen other girls since she died, and about another fifty before her. It's not like all the former Sea Queens meet for brunch every week."

Chopping required her to look at what she was doing, and Nancy kept talking. She could feel her father pause and glance at her from time to time, but he always went back to brewing coffee and getting his mug and sugar ready. She didn't know his mood, but it felt strange. Maybe it was a very normal interaction after accidentally getting a father arrested for a murder before you were even born, though that seemed like a hard thing to research.

"I had a moment of wondering if maybe Kate Drew had once been Lucy and you'd secretly saved her, but Karen would have recognized her. So if Lucy and Kate were separate people, the only thing they had in common was this town and the people here nineteen or twenty years ago. That leaves me out, but not you or Mom. You had no reason to want Lucy dead, but maybe it was too late to help her? You walked into a tragedy and had to react. So why would you let her die, and help hide evidence to save a killer? You might well have been worried about being targeted by the Hudsons. There had to be more to it. You wouldn't sacrifice yourself now and leave me alone against their revenge. I can't leave town and neither can you. You have to protect me by staying free to help."

The pan was hot, and she started the vegetables cooking. He had laid a spatula next to the stovetop, and she took a deep breath before the quiet helpful action made her burst into tears. Nancy knew she couldn't lose her father. She didn't know how to save him yet, but she would. 

"I went back. I didn't notice some things because I was so taken off guard when the seances did anything at all. Lucy didn't speak until I asked at the first one, and at the second one, she was supposed to anchor to the charm I'd borrowed from her brother. But she held on to my arm, just my arm."

The energy that had melted gold coins had spared the cheap bracelet charm, and Nancy suspected all that psychic energy had gone through her body instead. Lucy had sought a connection specifically to her, and several times tried to warn her. She hadn't taken the warnings seriously, but it was enough to wonder why a stranger would bother.

"I realized I'm only slightly too young to have known Lucy as a baby, and if we hadn't left town I would have been born that same year in Horseshoe Bay. So I did some really out of the box math. If I was a few months older than I thought, I could have been born that night. Maybe I was premature. Maybe I looked more or less dead, or no one knew Lucy was pregnant," she said slowly. 

The gurgle of the coffee pot was accompanied by the sizzle of the pan, but neither of them seemed to breathe for a moment. She looked at her father and he was braced on the counter, pressing his back into the corner and staring at her. He was pale, and she didn't think it was her cooking causing his distress. 

"I've watched video of Lucy's Sea Queen victory. She had a serious crinoline under that dress, and she was petite. If she was careful, she could have hidden a pregnant belly under it. There were rumours she was sleeping around, but that might have been sour grapes from the runner up," she said. "She was definitely dating Ryan Hudson, and not a favourite of Celia Hudson."

Nancy stirred the vegetables and cracked the eggs into a bowl. She was hesitating again. It was hard to process her own speculation, even though it felt like a real theory. It was just so melodramatic, and part of her was losing something of her identity admitting it. She took a minute to find the ham and dice it small, adding it to cook.

"It's crazy to picture you driving up to a murder scene, finding a dying girl and saving her newborn. Maybe Lucy was bleeding out and could tell you herself she was pregnant, or maybe she'd given birth alone. But what feels the most like you, like the best you could do, would be taking the baby away. If someone wanted Lucy dead, maybe it was just a roundabout way to kill her baby."

Her voice was going hoarse, every word taking more effort. But each word he didn't interrupt felt like another inching step to something vital. She'd always insisted on the truth from her parents, and this truth might be the only one to matter. Nancy whisked eggs and added them to the pan, with an offhand recognition George's cooking lessons were actually fruitful if she could have that conversation and still manage not to burn things. 

"The Hudsons knew you'd gone looking for Lucy. You couldn't just suddenly have a baby from nowhere. Her body would be examined and the police would know she'd been pregnant. They would have to at least look for the baby. The blood on her would be from a child and mother. You would have left DNA on the dress trying to help her. So you took the dress off, because now you had a child to protect. You made sure the body went over the cliff. You used the killer's knife to cut the umbilical cord. And you and Mom worked together on a story. Social workers take care of displaced newborns. She would have known what to do."

Nancy felt pale herself, and she absently seasoned the omelet before she put the lid on and set the oven timer for it to steam. She washed her hands and dried them, her path around the kitchen taking her to the opposite side of the room from her father's shaky turn to pour a cup of coffee for himself and one for her.

"You hoped leaving the knife would be enough to catch the killer. You didn't want them to get away with it," she said sadly. "But no one was interested in justice, and Lucy's family wasn't powerful like the Hudsons. You had a secret about that night, and couldn't draw attention to yourself. So you and Mom got married, and left. You stayed away until you could come home with a baby who was maybe a little bigger than her age suggested. But babies are fat, some are bigger than others. No one really quizzes a married couple on a baby that looks enough like at least one of them. Mom, Lucy and I could easily pass as relatives."

She walked over to stand nearby, taking the cup he extended to her. She bit her lip as he flexed his fists loosely, staring at his reflection in the coffee pot.

"Maybe this is all crazy. But I'm old enough the Hudsons have no way to take me away from you," Nancy whispered. "I know I'm a Drew and exactly who my real parents are. My mother is Kate Drew and she's in the northeast corner of heaven. You're my father. I'm ashamed I forgot for even a moment. You didn't kill Lucy or anyone. But maybe you saved me."

The silence was unbearable, and Nancy put down her cup to get a plate for his dinner. She hid her confusion by opening the fridge for the cheese, grating some on the plate. 

The whole theory was wild, and it created as many problems as it solved. They would both have to worry about the Hudsons regardless of the truth. She hadn't been lowkey investigating Tiffany or Lucy's murder. She was hopeless at going undercover anywhere in Horseshoe Bay. It was just too small a town not to be known once you'd become a girl detective at twelve. She was a teenage murder suspect walking around with a black eye and at least one awkward question for anyone she met.

The timer buzzing saved her from having to break the silence. She concentrated on the omelet more than it needed, sprinkling cheese and only fumbling it a bit at the first fold over. It landed on the plate mostly intact and looking good. 

"This should taste decent," Nancy said, trying to smile as she laid it on the table. She went to the drawer for a knife and fork, and carried her coffee to sit with him while he ate. 

Carson picked up his own cup, standing over her as he put the coffee down next to his plate. "This is a huge omelet," he said, chuckling. 

"It's six eggs. You said the jail food sucked," she reminded him.

"My god, I'm getting another plate. You need to eat at least half of this thing."

He walked away and came back with another plate and utensils. As he sawed the giant omelet in two, he looked at her warmly. 

"You're my daughter, no matter what. Facts, figures, DNA, acts of God or the devil or whatever else is out there. And neither of us is going anywhere," Carson told her. 

He leaned over her and kissed the top of her head, smoothing her hair down like he used to when her childhood adventures had left her with constant tangles. Nancy found herself holding his wrist to keep him there, and Carson sighed. He sat down, meeting her eyes. 

"I heard everything you said. I'm not angry at you. But I have to talk to my lawyer about my case before I can talk to you about anything. So consider us booked for my second meeting of the day, okay?"

Nancy let go of his hand so he could eat. "Okay. I can wait. Really this time. Um, try your food. I think I'm getting pretty good at eggs."

She watched him taste his first bite, waiting for his nod before she started eating. It wasn't anywhere nearly normal eating breakfast in the middle of the afternoon with both of them out on bail, but it was a family dinner together. She would be grateful and take the momentary peace while it lasted. They were going to need their strength to stand together.

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILER WARNING!
> 
> Without giving my whole run down of evidence from canon mentions of dozens of different things, Nancy is actually Lucy Sable's biological daughter born on the night she died, possibly fathered by Ryan Hudson. Carson Drew found her alive with Lucy dying or already dead, and he and Kate conspired to cover up Nancy's existence and raise her without the Hudson family discovering her parentage.


End file.
